exerciţii de balaurologie (eng)

The Rise and Fall of Numenor - The Western Land and the Doom of Power

One of the leading themes of Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings", a haunting background for the adventures of the heroes in the book, or for the appendices containing the detailed history of the Middle-earth and Numenor, is that of the easiness by which power corrupts the humans. Remember the dreaded wraiths, the Black Raiders? They were the once proud king of men, chosen to bear the rings of power - three for the Elves, seven for the Dwarfs and nine for Men. While seeming to have no negative effect on the Elves, the Rings of Power gave birth for a strange lust for gold in the case of the Dwarfs and corrupted the human spirit profoundly. The nine kings of Man transformed into the nightmarish Black Raiders, the blind servants of Sauron, the entity who in the story embodies pure evil. Sauron, although suffering a couple of bitter defeats, losing his physical form, rebirths from its own ashes and retakes his grasp on the lesser creatures of the Middle-earth, orcs, trolls, goblins and not last, Humans, using a special ring which he once forged himself and which allows him to control the other nineteen. Although not evil by nature, humans were easy to be corrupted by luring them on the side of evil with promisses of power. One example is obviously that of the wraith-kings, or a second one, that of the Stewart of Gondor, fallen under Sauron's control after he dared to glimpse into a powerfull orb which had the capacity to foretell the future, or that of Saruman, a human-like wizard which became Sauron's ally only to fulfill his megalomanic dreams. Not to remember the brave Boromir which, hypnotized by the evil ring was close to betraying The Fellowship and killing Frodo the Hobbit.

The power which the Ring embodied was a special one: in the last war which was previously fought on Middle-earth, Sauron lost confronting the Last Alliance. Although supposed to destroy the cursed Ring, thus forever defeating Sauron, Ilsidur, the Human king in charge, was charmed by its gleam and chose to take it with him to Andor. That will cost him the life: "Isildur took it, as should not have been. It should have been cast then into Orodruin's fire night at hand where it was made... But Isildur would not listen to our council... soon he was betrayed by it to his death; and so it is named in the North Isildur's Bane... ".

But alas!, all evil lurching Middel-earth had an ancient origin and that was the glorious rise and luciferic fall of the Numenor. The Numenor (The West Land, literally) folk was a special breed born from the mixture of elfish and human blood. They had a long span of life and great knowdledge and wisdom. The last king of Men, Aragorn, one of the key characters in the "Lord of the Rings" was the sole inheritor of the direct bloodline of the Kings of Numenor.

This great civilization once fought and won war aginst evil, defeating Morgoth, the master of Sauron; the apprentice Sauron was taken as prisoner to Numenor. A second time Sauron itself suffers a humiliating defeat by a numenorian army. With the Numenor on watch it seems that there is no chance for the Evil to creep back into the world. But Numenor itself had the key to its downfall: "And they broke the Ban of the Valar, and sailed into forbidden seas, going up with war against the Deathless, to wrest from them everlasting life within the Circles of the World...."

Hence, the Numenor is fallen due to its own pride and lust for power, and overtrusting its own might, tried to rise, like Lucifer once, against the Valar, the Guardians of the world. This can be obviously identified with the symbol of the luciferian rebellion, of the one most beloved angel which wanted to be God.

Tolkien always denied an allegorical motif or any allusions to the contemporary dangers of appeasement or any parallels to the ideological tales of its time.

But it is really so? The first chapter of the book, "The Fellowship of the Ring" was written in 1937, and published in 1954, shortly followed by the second one. There was a great delay in publishing the third volume which came to light in january 1956. Hence the book was written during the second world war and shortly after its ending. Maybe Tolkien himself did not intended any hidden symbolism for the elements of the "Lord of the Ring", especially considering the postwar optimism prevailing on the west-atlantic shore of the winners side, but wouldn't it be possible that such a symbolism could indeed underlay the plot of the book?

It might be the case. Otherwise, where from the obsessive association of the concepts of power and corruption? Where does this ideology of the once proud and fallen civilization, this recurrent myth of Altantis, comes from?

Moreover, is the numenorian civilization the symbolic counterpart of the United States? Themselves west of the Middle-earth (the Medi-terranean geographic area), themselves rescuing Europe twice from the menace of evil (like Numenor did, defeating Morgoth and after that Sauron), themselves a proud and mighty civilization, awaken to the awareness of its own almost unlimited power by the conflicts of the old continent (like Numenor was, after gloriously confronting evil). Striking analogies, indeed... Can we see the "Lord of the Ring" as a profetic book, announcing the decay of the US power, or at least casting a sort of a warning, or that would mean giving J.R.R. Tolkien too much credit ?

Many facts could be used as arguments to support the first hypothesis. The US as a world power and its credibility as a guarantor for world peace confronts today a major crisis. Many see them as the global bully and not as the lawfull good-doer. Fierce opposition and critique comes ironically from the ones once saved by US military intervention, namely the countries of the old continent. Direct military intervention elsewhere produced millions of deaths, impoverished whole areas, and doomed the generations to come; not-so-openly interventions like the support of the contras in South America, of the taliban in the conflict in Afganistan in the times of URSS, or of Saddam Hussein's in its genocidal actions against the kurds produced sorrow and deaths as well. Evil attacks also from inside, call it street violence, unemployment, drugs, the overcrowded prisons (according to an article written by Ramsey Clark, the former US Attorney General, 20% of the black males between 20 and 30 from the state of California are serving time), lack of social protection, increasing poverty and ethnic clustering etc. Are the US corrupted by their own dream of might? One of the voices of the radical left in the States, Noam Chomsky is advancing this hypothesis: in his view, would have been some other power instead of the US to have to play the role of the unique pole of global might, their actions would suffer from the same impunity as today those of the US. And since the US politics is driven not only by powerfull industry lobbies, as some think, but also by ideology, this is a very credible scenario.

But this would mean that Tolkien should have had some hidden profetic powers, otherwise all this stirring correspondencies wouldn't have occured. And I seriously doubt that. I would advance another hypothesis, which with proper argumentation may even hold.

Generally, two events are correlated if they share the same source or if one of them is causing the other. As the second case would require the use of profetic abilities (and some would recklessly subscribe too such a theory) we are left with the possibility that both Tolkiens story and the to-day international evolutions to be tuned on the same theme song.

According to Haydn White's "Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism", the historical discourse is following four fundamental "plots" or tropics: Romantic, Tragic, Comic and Ironic. It is possible that the same tropic which is used to encode the "Lord of the Rings" namely, the Romantic one is also the one inspiring the ideological entanglement driving the US foreign policy. This implies that the world is in a period of decadence following that of the fall from an edenic realm. All efforts are made to re-integrate the world into the original harmony, to restore its former glory; this is roughly the leitmotif of the nazi ideology which tried to restore the purity of the arian breed. The results of their experiment is well-known. Some even convincingly argued that the same hyperborean myth was a breeding ground for the communist utopias. This theme may succesfully superpose the mesianic and apocaliptic ones, already present into the christian Psyche and to which is formally similar. Is no surprise then that a vast majority of the supporters of the US politics of global dominance comes from the right-wing christian milieu. Tolkien was only unconsciously playing the same tune, it didn't matter if he was a believer or not. The "arianic" elements are abundent in its book: the tall and blond elves (the closest to perfection, immortal beings, immune to the enslaving effects of the Rings of power), the tall and proud (and blond !) numenorians opposed to the lesser people, a dark and small breed of easterners (with a smaller span of life), the extended use of runes for the elfish alphabet... Even Peter Jakson's easterners, fighting alongside the evil Sauron had a striking "arab" look... On top of that, the same overwhelming rethoric of "courage", "honour", "evil" "sacrifice" etc.

To conclude, while I do not expect that the Valar or God or whatever "ex machina" force would punish the insolent actions of the contemporary numenorians, I don't doubt that the moral corruption fuelled by the drog of holding unquestionable power can affect the whole world in an irreversible and tragic manner.

“The world is changed.

I feel it in the water.

I feel it in the earth.

I smell it in the air.

Much that once was is lost, for none now live who remember it."